Recent progress on superconductors with time-reversal symmetry breaking

Sudeep Kumar Ghosh; Michael Smidman; Tian Shang; James F Annett; Adrian D Hillier; Jorge Quintanilla; Huiqiu Yuan

doi:10.1088/1361-648X/abaa06

Recent progress on superconductors with time-reversal symmetry breaking

J Phys Condens Matter. 2020 Oct 16;33(3). doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/abaa06.

Authors

Sudeep Kumar Ghosh¹, Michael Smidman^{2

3}, Tian Shang^{4

5}, James F Annett⁶, Adrian D Hillier⁷, Jorge Quintanilla¹, Huiqiu Yuan^{2

3

8

9}

Affiliations

¹ Physics of Quantum Materials, School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NH, United Kingdom.
² Center for Correlated Matter and Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, People's Republic of China.
³ Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Laboratory for Multiscale Materials Experiments, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen CH-5232, Switzerland.
⁵ Physik-Institut, Universität Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
⁶ H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TL, United Kingdom.
⁷ ISIS Facility, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot OX11 0QX, United Kingdom.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, People's Republic of China.
⁹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 32721940
DOI: 10.1088/1361-648X/abaa06

Abstract

Superconductivity and magnetism are adversarial states of matter. The presence of spontaneous magnetic fields inside the superconducting state is, therefore, an intriguing phenomenon prompting extensive experimental and theoretical research. In this review, we discuss recent experimental discoveries of unconventional superconductors which spontaneously break time-reversal symmetry and theoretical efforts in understanding their properties. We discuss the main experimental probes and give an extensive account of theoretical approaches to understand the order parameter symmetries and the corresponding pairing mechanisms, including the importance of multiple bands.

Keywords: broken time reversal symmetry; order parameter; superconductivity.

Publication types

Review